Author Topic: computer backup Canada? (seeded)  (Read 4764 times)

scrubbyfish

  • Guest
computer backup Canada? (seeded)
« on: February 24, 2015, 08:39:45 AM »
I want to implement the ultimate backup system, but I don't want to be uploading data for a month (that's how long it took last time), so I'd like to use one of those "seeded backup" options like CrashPlan offers, where I save to an external drive and send it to them and they upload that first round. I'd use CrashPlan itself, but they don't offer seeded backup for folks in Canada (only US, NZ, and AUS, I think).

My dream:

1. Have all files backed up to Cloud service like CrashPlan (except via seeded route), and external drive, and quick-backup like DropBox or Evernote.

2. Click one button weekly to update backup to Cloud and external.

Is there a trusted company in Canada doing seeded backup? Other ideas?
Is there a way to save whole docs (Word, Calc, etc) in Evernote?
Is DropBox, with its fee for more room, the best option for daily, interim backup?

MrFrugalChicago

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 340
Re: computer backup Canada? (seeded)
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2015, 09:56:17 AM »
What and how much do you backup?

I have a tiered backup strategy. All my mediumly important but replaceable stuff goes to a NAS I have sitting on my desk. Gigabit link to it, so very fast. (Via crashplan free plan actually)

All my priceless stuff goes off to the cloud (via google drive actually).

Can you separate out important with priceless?  If My MP3 collection dies, its okay - I can redownload from amazon or rebuy. If a house fire took out my wedding picture originals, I could never replacethem.

This ends up being both cheaper and faster than perfectly backing up EVERYTHING.

Sid Hoffman

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 928
  • Location: Southwest USA
Re: computer backup Canada? (seeded)
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2015, 10:12:38 AM »
I back up to an external hard drive and then take that to my parents' house every few weeks or so.  Before they lived in-state, I used a safe deposit box at the bank.  Same general idea though: you want something offsite so you're protected from fire & theft.  Backing up to a hard drive that's located in your own residence doesn't protect you from fire, and may not protect you from theft if they really clean the place out.

My genuinely important docs I have in a Dropbox folder, so they are continuously up to date in the cloud.  In most cases, even if my house burned down several weeks after my last offline backup, I'd still lose nothing, or close to nothing since the stuff with a high rate of change is in the Dropbox.

I got in this method because one of my methods of data protection is preventative.  I used to buy a new hard drive every year.  The old hard drive would enter rotation as a backup hard drive using a swappable external hard drive enclosure.  So my primary hard drive would be no more than 1 year old and the backup drives would be no more than 3 years old.  I've let everything age a bit more since then, plus even my desktop computer is now a 2.5" hard drive, not the 3.5" that my enclosure uses.  At this point I have to decide if I want to start buying new external hard drives, or how I want to manage this.

I might just start buying external hard drives on a 2 or 3 year schedule.  If each drive is $100 and I'm buying a new one every 30 months, that's $3.33/month per external drive, which is still less than any online service that can accommodate my 200GB backups.  If you're spending $70/year for a safe deposit box like I was, that adds $5.83/month to your cost, but OTOH you can keep a lot more in a safe deposit box than just a little hard drive.  Some may already have a safe deposit box or might want one anyway.  A safe deposit box is something you can sign up for in any country, or any country you may move to in the future.

Sid Hoffman

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 928
  • Location: Southwest USA
Re: computer backup Canada? (seeded)
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2015, 10:16:09 AM »
Is DropBox, with its fee for more room

Oh, I should also point out that I'm only using maybe 300MB of space with Dropbox, which is well within the free range.  I do not pay anything to dropbox and would happily switch to something else, like MS Onedrive or something if Dropbox discontinued their free storage offering.

Kaspian

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1533
  • Location: Canada
    • My Necronomicon of Badassity
Re: computer backup Canada? (seeded)
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2015, 10:49:13 AM »
I back up to an external hard drive and then take that to my parents' house every few weeks or so. 

Off-site backup?!  Nice!!  I do the exact same thing. Every month or two I backup my files onto a hard drive I keep connected to my PS3 (easy way to access my music collection and photos when guests are over).  About twice a year I copy all my photos, music, and documents to another drive I keep at my folks' place.  I'm a computer/database guy for a living--I don't trust the cloud nor use it.  Screw that.

scrubbyfish

  • Guest
Re: computer backup Canada? (seeded)
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2015, 11:08:49 AM »
I think the total files I consider irreplaceable is 12gb.

Right now I do the external hard drive swap-to-safe deposit box thing. I have two external hard drives, and exchange them at least monthly.

I keep 7 years of tax docs, as required by law, plus project documents as far back as 17 years (because live projects are still using them) and photos. I think the one backup took a month because I was uploading my entire system. My hope had been that if my computer died, I'd be able to download the whole system. When it took so long, I then understood that I can skip system stuff and just keep the docs.

I'm pretty nervous about not being able to retrieve docs I've backed up, though. I know people who thought they were backing stuff up but when they needed the stuff, found it wasn't there (missing files, corrupted files). The external drives I have are SeaGate and I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the files I've backed up (just to check that it's even working). Of course, that's one more reason places recommend having at least three systems: off-site external drive, secure Cloud, and a second computer. Even a dude I talked to at CrashPlan strongly recommended I not rely entirely on CP -he was mortified when I told him I wanted everything (only) there, simply grabbing files as needed for current work.

MrFrugalChicago

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 340
Re: computer backup Canada? (seeded)
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2015, 12:22:31 PM »
I think the total files I consider irreplaceable is 12gb.

Right now I do the external hard drive swap-to-safe deposit box thing. I have two external hard drives, and exchange them at least monthly.

I keep 7 years of tax docs, as required by law, plus project documents as far back as 17 years (because live projects are still using them) and photos. I think the one backup took a month because I was uploading my entire system. My hope had been that if my computer died, I'd be able to download the whole system. When it took so long, I then understood that I can skip system stuff and just keep the docs.

I'm pretty nervous about not being able to retrieve docs I've backed up, though. I know people who thought they were backing stuff up but when they needed the stuff, found it wasn't there (missing files, corrupted files). The external drives I have are SeaGate and I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the files I've backed up (just to check that it's even working). Of course, that's one more reason places recommend having at least three systems: off-site external drive, secure Cloud, and a second computer. Even a dude I talked to at CrashPlan strongly recommended I not rely entirely on CP -he was mortified when I told him I wanted everything (only) there, simply grabbing files as needed for current work.

Yes, that is why I do local nas + cloud. The NAS is fine for any computer crash. The really important stuff is safe in the cloud.

Would need to lose PC + NAS + Cloud all at once to lose my important stuff.. odds are so low, I have no concerns.

Sid Hoffman

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 928
  • Location: Southwest USA
Re: computer backup Canada? (seeded)
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2015, 01:00:50 PM »
Would need to lose PC + NAS + Cloud all at once to lose my important stuff.. odds are so low, I have no concerns.

That's the way I see it too.  I don't trust any single technology to always be there.  Dropbox could shut down or lose data, my offsite backup could be destroyed, my local PC & backup could be lost/destroyed...  but the odds of all of that happening at the same time are incredibly small.

On the topic of restores, yes, always test your restores at least every so often.  Many years ago I had a hard drive failure result in the total destruction of my primary copy.  At the time I used 4 hard drives in a RAID 0+1 setup for my home PC.  It corrupted itself badly enough that the whole RAID was corrupted and no data was recoverable.  That's cool, I figured, I'll restore from my last full backup.  Problem was that a small portion of the backup was corrupt.  I got back probably 95% of my data and the 5% I lost was basically "fluff" like a file of archived emails and old video games I could just reinstall from the CDs.

Anyway, point being I had never tested a restore before then.  It turned out the software I was using was known for corruption in a certain way that I encountered when doing image backups from a home RAID setup.  Since then I have never tried to do RAID at home, and I've tested restores on a regular basis.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!